Flavor Boulevard

Ice cream and potato chips

Mai — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:36:53 +0000

- 2 scoops Dreyer’s Double Fudge Brownie ice cream - 1 scoop Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia froyo - A handful of potato chips Use the potato chips to scoop the ice cream. They may break, in which case lick your finger and get a spoon.

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Chewy dried banana

Mai — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:50:43 +0000

They aren’t banana chips. Those are crunchy, not very sweet, and make you thirsty. These are chewy and packed with honey sweetness. They’re as addicting as soft-baked chocolate chip cookies and as healthy as dried blueberries. At least I like to think so when I nibble twenty of them in one go.

Chewy dried bananas come [...]

In the Eye of Tea

Mai — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:14:49 +0000

After a 5-course afternoon tea, the three of us felt our stomachs’ calling. The wind blew chilly moisture from the sea. A hearty dinner of noodle in hot broth would hit the spot, one that was saturated with oolong. Quite appropriately, we walked into O Chamé, meaning “eye of tea”(*) literally and “playful little one” [...]

Pre-rain Dragon Well from the Lion Peak

Mai — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:10:05 +0000

The best (known) green tea of China. The cream of the cream of the crop. I feel sophisticated just drinking it. Paired with a tangerine bee pollen truffle and I almost hear little cherubim playing the lyre. You can read the whole story in my journal Tea & Mai. I’m off to dance in my head.

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Vanessa’s Bistro, sweet and savory the Vietnamese way

Mai — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:17:54 +0000

“You girls know how to eat”, our hostess smiled at us, the check attached. Ten things. At a tapas place like Vanessa’s Bistro where everything sounds tasty, I’d say we did a pretty good job narrowing down our choices, and we asked for the house recommendations only three times. All rendered success.

The first decision was [...]

9 tips to make your food post interesting

Mai — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:56:19 +0000

Recently I’ve received an increasing number of requests to guest-post on my site, which makes me ecstatic, but it also sets me in a difficult position to evaluate what is interesting. Of the millions of food blogs out there, what makes yours interesting? It’s you. Your voice, your emotions and your own experience with the [...]

Recipe versus Review

Mai — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:36:35 +0000

Today I make a list to re-evaluate my blogging life.

Recipe posts: Pros:

A lot of room for personal story A lot of control with pictures: position, setting (decoration, utensil, plating), lighting, time (time of the day, amount of time for taking picture), camera equipment (unless you’re brazen and bring a tripod into the restaurant, some people do that, [...]

Himalayan Flavors and the mango art

Mai — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:41:55 +0000

Last year I had a great meal at Himalayan Flavors, starting with a reddish purple smoothie whose ingredients I no longer remember and can’t find anywhere on their current menu, and ending with a mango dessert. The owner is Nepalese, so technically, the food is Nepalese, which is too similar to Indian for me to [...]

Goma mushi manju (black sesame button)

Mai — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:03:16 +0000

Technically, ごま蒸し饅頭 (goma mushi manjuu) means Steamed Sesame Bun (as a friend told me), but I’m a firm believer that proper nouns, i.e., names, cannot be translated without losing some of their meaning. Since there is no sufficient translation already, I might as well make the English name suitable to describe the object instead of [...]

Sencha and yomogi mochi

Mai — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:36:39 +0000

The third pairing of mochi and Japanese green tea. Perfect!

Yes, finally a mochi that goes perfectly with sencha. Yomogi (Japanese mugwort), julienned into tiny strings and mixed with the mochi dough, gives the mochi a clean, refreshing taste, which reminds me of the tip of a Vietnamese bánh ít or a bánh ít gai (*).

However, [...]